Portal
is a new term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World
Wide Web site. It is proposed to be major starting sites for
users when they get connected to the Web or users tend to
visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized
or niche portals. Some major general portals include Yahoo,
Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America
Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden.com
(for gardeners), Fool.com (for investors), Ikres.com (for
F&B) and SearchNT.com (for Windows NT administrators).
A large number of access providers offer portals to the Web
for their own users. Most portals have adopted the Yahoo style
of content categories with a text-intensive, faster loading
page which visitors will find easy to use and to return to.
Companies with portal sites have attracted the interest of
the stock market investors because portals are perceived as
able to command large audiences and numbers of advertising
viewers.
Typical services offered by portal sites include a directory
of Web sites, a facility to search for other sites, news,
weather information, food & beverages, industry news, e-mail,
shopping products, stock quotes, phone and map information,
and sometimes a community forum. Any of these portals, WEBSE
can provide a total solution, which includes consultancy,
system development, infrastructure setup, administration training,
Internet marketing strategy and future web maintenance. WEBSE
has been very successful in assisting our customers to fully
implement their pilot portal projects like ikres.com and cocolulu.cc.
Cocolulu.cc is among the first local shopping portals to offer
its merchants the ability to create their own websites that
are personalized for their interests. Ikres.com is one of
the pioneer food & beverages portals that offers various exchanging
activities in the F&B industry. It can even provide its users
with the online bonus points earning and gift redemption via
website surfing. |
